Install boinc on debian and use ati

2020.05.14

I have installed boinc on my debian, and I find I can use ati to accelerate the calculation.

Basic install

Follow the boinc website step, we just need to run:

sudo apt-get install boinc-client boinc-manager

(You can find more details at https://boinc.berkeley.edu/wiki/Installing_BOINC)

OpenCL configuration

1.Download the AMDGPU-PRO drivers at https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/release-notes/rn-pro-lin-20-q1

• Please pay attention that this link may not up-to-date, you can just search it at http://google.com/ with AMDGPU-PRO drivers
• Debian also use ubuntu version

2.Unpack the file, unar is one of my favorate command:

unar amdgpu-pro-19.50-990351-ubuntu-18.04.tar.xz

3.cd amdgpu-pro-19.50-990351-ubuntu-18.04 4.Install the openCL part of this driver by run:

./amdgpu-pro-install --opencl=legacy,pal --headless

5.Wait it complete and restart the computer

Disable the officail start-up

Due to some strange problems, I strongle recommend you to stop it:

1. Disable the office boinc start-up: If your system use systemctl to manager the startup applications, you can input:

sudo systemctl disable boinc-client.service

to disable the boinc official startup

Enable your start-up

1. Basic prepare work

1.1 Firstly you need to choice your boinc work directory

the default directory is /var/lib/boinc-client(If you use ls -all at /var/lib you will find a link of /var/lib/boinc-client named boinc), and you can use this but I choice a home directory named boinc at /home/boinc:

sudo mkdir /home/boinc
sudo mkdir /home/boinc/boinc_work_dir
sudo chown -R boinc:boinc /home/boinc

• Note: /home directory may cause some safety problems!!

1.2 Test your system Your should test your whole system right now by:

cd /home/boinc/boinc_work_dir
boinc

And the terminal will show just like:

Fri May 15 16:28:07 2020 |  | OpenCL: AMD/ATI GPU 0: AMD Radeon Graphics (driver version 3004.6, device version OpenCL 1.2 AMD-APP (3004.6), 2042MB, 2042MB available, 576 GFLOPS peak)

If you can just get no usable gpu found, you should run OpenCL configuration part again If you get the message around amd opencl, it means you can use amd gpu now, input sudo pkill -9 boinc to stop this boinc progress.

2. Write your own start-up script Input :

sudo vim /etc/systemd/system/boinc-user.service

to create the script, and fill it with:

[Unit]
Description=Sakura Frp Client
Wants=network-online.target
After=network-online.target syslog.target

[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=/usr/bin/boinc --dir /home/boinc/boinc_work_dir

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

• Please pay attention to the --dir /home/boinc/boinc_work_dir, this must be where you chose to be boinc work directory. Save it and run:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable boinc-user.service

The first command reload the list and the next command enable our own boinc start-up script

3. Change the boincmgr data directory You can just run:

boincmgr -d /home/boinc/boinc_work_dir

To start it or you can edit the Path=... part of /usr/share/applications/boinc-manager.desktop

• I use xfce4, if you can not find /usr/share/applications/boinc-manager.desktop, maybe you didn't install it or the matter of different desktop environment.
• Sometimes boincmgr can not connect to your boinc, try to stop boinc by run sudo systemctl stop boinc-user.service, and empty the gui_rpc_auth.cfg in your boinc work directory with sudo

Enjoy it